The Obama administration is moving forward with regulations designed to help diversify America’s wealthier neighborhoods, drawing fire from critics who decry the proposal as executive overreach in search of an “unrealistic utopia.”

A final Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) rule due out this month is aimed at ending decades of deep-rooted segregation around the country.

The regulations would use grant money as an incentive for communities to build affordable housing in more affluent areas while also taking steps to upgrade poorer areas with better schools, parks, libraries, grocery stores and transportation routes as part of a gentrification of those communities.
“HUD is working with communities across the country to fulfill the promise of equal opportunity for all,” a HUD spokeswoman said. “The proposed policy seeks to break down barriers to access to opportunity in communities supported by HUD funds.”

It’s a tough sell for some conservatives. Among them is Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), who argued that the administration “shouldn’t be holding hostage grant monies aimed at community improvement based on its unrealistic utopian ideas of what every community should resemble.”

“American citizens and communities should be free to choose where they would like to live and not be subject to federal neighborhood engineering at the behest of an overreaching federal government,” said Gosar, who is leading an effort in the House to block the regulations.

Civil rights advocates, meanwhile, are praising the plan, arguing that it is needed to break through decades-old barriers that keep poor and minority families trapped in hardscrabble neighborhoods.

“We have a history of putting affordable housing in poor communities,” said Debby Goldberg, vice president at the National Fair Housing Alliance.

HUD says it is obligated to take the action under the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which prohibited direct and intentional housing discrimination, such as a real estate agent not showing a home in a wealthy neighborhood to a black family or a bank not providing a loan based on someone’s race.

The agency is also looking to root out more subtle forms of discrimination that take shape in local government policies that unintentionally harm minority communities, known as “disparate impact.”

“This rule is not about forcing anyone to live anywhere they don’t want to,” said Margery Turner, senior vice president at the left-leaning Urban Institute. “It’s really about addressing long-standing practices that prevent people from living where they want to.”

“In our country, decades of public policies and institutional practices have built deeply segregated and unequal neighborhoods,” Turner said.

Children growing up in poor communities have less of a chance of succeeding in life, because they face greater exposure to violence and crime, and less access to quality education and health facilities, Turner suggested.

“Segregation is clearly a problem that is blocking upward mobility for children growing up today,” she said.

To qualify for certain funds under the regulations, cities would be required to examine patterns of segregation in neighborhoods and develop plans to address it. Those that don’t could see the funds they use to improve blighted neighborhoods disappear, critics of the rule say.

“It’s a sign that this administration seems to take race into account on everything,” Spakovsky said.

Republicans are trying to block the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule. Before passing HUD’s funding bill this week, the GOP-led House approved Gosar’s amendment prohibiting the agency from following through with the rule.

HUD is looking to break down many barriers, but Gosar suggested the regulation would have negative repercussions.

“Instead of living with neighbors you like and choose, this breaks up the core fabric of how we start to look at communities,” Gosar said. “That just brings unease to everyone in that area.”

“People have to feel comfortable where they live,” he added. “If I don’t feel comfortable in my own backyard, where do I feel comfortable?”

Critics of the rule say it would allow HUD to assert authority over local zoning laws. The agency could dictate what types of homes are built where and who can live in those homes, said Gosar, who believes local communities should make those decisions for themselves rather than relying on the federal government.

If enacted, the rule could depress property values as cheaper homes crop up in wealthy neighborhoods and raise taxes, Gosar warned.

It could also tilt the balance of political power as more minorities are funneled into Republican-leaning neighborhoods, he suggested.

The Supreme Court is expected to weigh in on housing discrimination in a related case in the coming weeks. At issue is whether government policies that unintentionally create a disparate impact for minority communities violate federal laws against segregation.

The Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs is facing accusations that it makes low-income housing funds more readily available in minority neighborhoods than in white neighborhoods. This promotes segregation, critics argue, by encouraging minorities to continue living in poor communities where government assistance is available.

Court observers say the case could have a profound impact on HUD’s rule.

Politicians who oppose this should have a simple test for white genociders: "Your neighborhood will be first right?"

__________________

"It is much to be feared that the last word of democracy thus understood (and let me hasten to add that it is susceptible of a different interpretation) would be a form of society in which a degenerate mass would have no thought beyond that of enjoying the ignoble pleasures of the vulgar"

It certainly is news and more bad politics by Obama.
HUD has already destroyed countless neighborhoods. When I was growing up poor people who could not afford rent were housed together in "projects". Then the occupants made ghettos out of their free apartments and destroyed them. Part of my past life as a Broker involved watching the government take aggressive action to get rid of "projects" and to give every Negro a beautiful new home for next to nothing.

In case someone doesn't understand this insidious "New HUD", this is how it works:
1. During the construction of most new subdivisions you see being built, approximately 20%-40% are bought by investors, not live on site type of investors, but investors from China, India, ect.
2. Those investors then advertise these homes for lease to HUD applicants.
The government LOVES this system, the projects are torn down, the poor and often the criminal element gets spread throughout a city. No longer can news crews go to one section exclusively and identify the problem people. The Crime is spread out, so most subdivisions(especially newer ones), are increasingly sprinkled with criminals, cars on blocks, non working boyfriends of the breeders who get the HUD lease money.
3. Most of my HUD applicants worked, but ALL would fake their income and under report it. They never have a father listed on the lease, 100% NEVER. Yet a boyfriend(or 3) always lives in the home, along with a troop of kids. Often multiple families live in a HUD leased home in beautiful Gate golf clubs, right next door to people who worked their entire lives to get away from trashy neighbors.

Whites can try to "white flight" and the government is catching up to the fleeing whites and placing bad neighbors right next door in a HUD leased home. No longer are the poor getting just a place off the street, out of the elements, now single mothers with 7 kids are leasing gated community homes I could not afford. The liberal mindset believes everyone deserves a beautiful home paid by the taxpayer.

The ONLY thing that has stopped the destruction of thousands of Suburbs is the homeowner's associations that restrict who can live in their area, and rules that must be followed. New Obama laws will take power away from the Homeowner's association, and will make it a Federal crime to enforce common sense rules of good neighborhood behavior. If an HOA tries to fine a HUD leased home owner because it's occupants are drug dealers, or spend their entire life in the front yard playing rap music, the Obama administration is creating news laws to protect the aggressive freeloaders from the so called "harassment" by the Homeowner's association.
This type of news doesn't make big headlines, yet if enacted will effect nearly everyone in a negative way.

It wouldn't be bad for some of the rich whites to get a crash course in real black behavior. The majority of self hating whites grew up rich far removed from blacks. Perhaps the older rich whites will learn that simply voting R and going about their day as if a problem doesn't exist isn't working when it's their children dealing with blacks.

Getting first hand experience rather than just what they see on TV may do some good.